Coinfloor was launched early 2013, with its headquarter located in the United Kingdom. The platform markets itself as the “world’s safest exchange” with the “most liquid Pound Sterling to Bitcoin order book”.

Trading

Coinfloor offers its users only one cryptocurrency to trade in. Besides Bitcoin, there are no altcoins that can be traded on the platform. There are, however, multiple (currently four) fiat currencies against which Bitcoin can be traded. Regardless of the currency pair the trade fees are quite high, with taker fees starting at 38 basis points per trade. The bid-ask spread are also rather wide, hovering around 60 basis points for most currency pairs except GBP/BTC on transactions worth $1,000 in BTC. In the latter case the spread sometimes dipped below 20 basis points in a sample taken for this review. Given that the exchange is based in the UK this is hardly surprising. It also provides support for the advertised liquidity on the GBP order book.

The platform does not offer much value for money in terms of trading functionalities. Apart from being able to place either a market or a limit order there are no other available features, meaning that it is not possible to use advanced order types or short sell/trade on margin.

Coinfloor Trading Summary

Item

Details

# Cryptocurrencies

6 (BTC / BCH / ETC / ETH / LTC / XRP)

# Fiat currencies

4 (EUR / USD / GBP / PLN)

Trade fees (trade size $1,000)

0.38%

BTC/USD half bid-ask + impact (trade size $1,000)

0.60%

Minimum trade size

No

Margin trading

Not supported

Derivatives

Not supported

Market orders

Supported

Advanced orders

Not supported

Funding

Accounts can be funded with multiple currencies such as EUR, USD, GBP and even PLN, but it matters little for the processing time which is at least one business day and may take up to four business days. In all cases, the minimum deposit is at least 1000 units of the respective currency which seems rather high. From the available options EUR deposits are most likely the cheapest ones, as these can be made through SEPA transfers (with low to zero additional costs).

Other currencies require international wire transfers that are likely to be accompanied by additional transfer fees. For example, (foreign) outgoing in the US will cost $35 or more per transaction. Coinfloor itself also charges an additional fee of $10 for USD transactions. This way the user can lose five percent before the money even makes it to the exchange. The minimum withdrawal amount is significantly lower and approaches zero, but the fees charged by Coinfloor are higher than on deposits while the processing time is equally slow or even slower.

Coinfloor Funding Summary

Item

Details

Cheapest funding method available in

European Union

Cheapest funding method

SEPA

Deposit fees (local)

Free of charge

Withdrawal fees (local)

Free of charge

Instant deposits possible?

No

Bitcoin Deposit fees

Free of charge

Bitcoin Withdrawal fees

Free of charge

Platform

Upon logging in for the first time it will be immediately become clear that there is no way around two factor authentication. There are not many exchanges that require this by default, but it certainly helps raising the security standard for user accounts. After the logging screen users will encounter a simple platform that is both easy to navigate and use. Of course this is boosted by the fact has little functions that needed to be fitted in, which is therefore an advantage in this case. It has also been made responsive, so it will run optimally on mobile platforms.

Help & Support

Coinfloor offers a relatively extensive FAQ despite the fact that the exchange only has a limited set of available features. It even includes some generic information on Bitcoin. The only drawback is that a disclaimer on the risks involved with trading cryptocurrencies could not be found. In the unlikely event that the FAQ leaves a question unanswered, or if any other technical support is needed, users can leave a ticket requesting support. These will be addresses during business hours on weekdays only, with an expected response time of 24 hours. Especially live (chat or phone) support would be a welcome addition in this area.

Legitimacy

The company’s legitimacy has been evaluated with the help of a Fraud Risk Assessment. A summary is provided below, and the full assessment can be found by following this link.

Item

Number

Red flags

2

Warnings

2

A weighting factor of 40% is applied to legitimacy in calculating the final rating. A weighting factor of 25% is applied to both trading and funding, while a weighting factor of only 15% is applied to both platform and support. If the legitimacy score is 0% then the total rating is automatically set to the lowest possible result.